


Waking up to you

by staccatz



Category: Hololive, Virtual Streamer Animated Characters
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, POV First Person, POV Third Person, because whether the usual tropes associated them will appear or not is questionable, but their roles are important, hmm how do i even begin describing this, i’ll refrain from adding ship tags for the other three right now, so as not to muddle the focus of this fic, take those au tags with a heavy grain of salt, with this all of holomyth is present now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29472801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staccatz/pseuds/staccatz
Summary: In which Calli is a med student, Kiara is a waitress, and the two have more than enough issues to sort through individually without the other being thrown into the mix. Unless...?
Relationships: Mori Calliope/Takanashi Kiara
Comments: 10
Kudos: 133





	1. Waking up to you

Prologue: It started with a drink

\--

Dry, 

bitter, 

_uncomfortable_. 

That pretty much sums up how things have been going as of late, eh?

I finished swallowing the mouthful before holding up the bottle so I could peer more closely at the label. “Oi, what the hell is this?” 

I resisted the urge to hurl it out since I had to have it, of course. I couldn’t really make out the words, so either the room was just too dark or I was already too far gone. Neither the flickering of my idling second monitor nor the light pollution filtering in through the curtains of my tiny, dingy apartment room’s window were helping much. 

_Ah, fuck it._ It was pretty much time to sleep anyway. 

After deciding I’d just use extra toothpaste the next morning after I caught some zzz’s— _or maybe I’ll just stop thinking,_ I winced as my head started throbbing—I adjusted the headset around my long, disheveled hair before letting my head hit the pillow. 

_Here’s to nothing, I guess._

—

Chapter 1: Waking up to you

\--

How I found myself sitting at a random coffee shop near uni...I don’t even know. This _was_ a coffee shop, right? This _is_ where students go to study, right? I peered at the slideshow of menu items flashing across the screens suspended behind the front counter, above the heads of employees that looked, well, just about as tiredly unenthusiastic as I was. I didn’t feel like moving from my seat to get a closer look. Well, it’s not like the assortment of anatomy notes in front of me was going to go anywhere if I went up to check, but...eh. Class was in half an hour. I was beginning to think this was a mistake.

The thing was, I didn’t even _like_ coffee...but damn my head was killing me, and it had been a while since I’d let my scribbly handwriting see the light of day. I was always cooped up in my room or some lecture hall when I worked. _Live a little, Calliope_. That’s the justification I gave myself for being here as I kept squinting at the display, trying to shake off the grogginess. 

Hey, you can’t blame a girl for going to bed listening to some tunes, which apparently I was doing because I vaguely remembered waking up with some sick flow still blasting in my ears, my phone almost as dead as my motivation. It kinda took a lot just to get up this morning.

 _Ch...chicken sandwich?_ I squinted harder. _Oh, maybe this isn’t a_ _—_

“We do have physical menus, you know,” a voice teased in close proximity. My view of the screen was suddenly obstructed by a cheery face—a woman, eyes bright and head tilted to the side curiously, had suddenly manifested before me.

“W-wha—”

And then the chicken sandwich came back into view only _much_ closer and I coughed, choking back a guttural sound in my throat as I grabbed the laminated sheet from her outstretched hands and brought it back to a more reasonable distance from my eyeballs. Said eyes darted back to the woman who had somehow made her way to my table without me noticing. Fiery orange hair. Flashy employee outfit. Feather earrings…?

“Thanks, Miss—” I glanced at her nametag,

“—Kiara!”

“I can read, you know,” I deadpanned.

She pouted, practically stomping her feet a little. “But it’s not as fun if I don’t introduce myself!” 

I pinched the bridge of my nose. This girl had too much energy for the morning, especially for this particular morning when my brain was shot and my energy levels were at an all-time low. “Well...nice to meet you, but you see, I seem to have made a mistake because I came here to study a bit before class,” I gestured at the cluttered table, “but I can now see that this is actually a fast food place and not a coffee shop, and how I failed to make that distinction before walking in I have no idea. I think I am losing my marbles.” 

I started to pack the papers away, deciding that maybe it was time to go to class early for once, before I was interrupted by giggling. 

“You _can_ study here you know! There’s nothing wrong with studying here!” The girl was waving her hands around in a ‘don’t worry about it’ sort of manner. 

I paused from stuffing a notebook into my bag. “That may be so, but I was still looking to get—”

“Coffee? A coffee? Coming right up! We serve coffee here too!!” 

“...you interrupt people a lot, did you know that?”

The girl stepped back, a bit bashful. I suddenly realized she’d been up in my face up till now. “I mean, only if you want it…”

I finished cramming in the last of the papers, but instead of getting up to put on my bag and leave, I dropped it unceremoniously on the table where the mess used to be. “Well, whatever. Sure, why the hell...” I coughed, clearing my throat. _Not like that_. “Yes please. I’ll have one.” I started reaching into the pocket where my wallet was at.

“Yay!!” She skipped off, nearly tripping over herself but managing to make it back behind the counter. Her coworkers gave her some ‘looks’, one of them not even trying to conceal her laughter. I don’t really blame them, as I was pretty much the only customer here at the moment and this girl was making all this ruckus in the small establishment over me. Weird. 

_Guess I’ll pay later,_ I shrugged as I checked my phone. 7:33. 

I leaned back and sighed, closing my eyes, thinking about heading to lecture and then...that sterile, white-walled prison afterwards. The wooden backing of the chair squeaked and gave a little under my weight. I could finally hear my thoughts again above the gurgling of the coffee machine and the girl humming from somewhere behind the counter, mixed in with the faint whizzing of cars rushing by outside in the cold winter air. _I don’t want to go to class_. 

After a few precious minutes of nothing but serene white noise, the clickity-clack of slightly off-kilter footsteps interrupted my makeshift meditation, or maybe it’d be better described as some sort of zen sulking… I opened one eye to see the redhead energetically making her way back here, coffee in hand, heels meeting hard tile with each ste—wait, the girl skipped around in _heels_? 

I frowned. No, no, no, that was a bad idea, anybody could see that that sort of happy-go-lucky attitude paired with the questionable footwear and hot coffee in her hand was gonna lead to some sort of mishap, right? It wasn’t just me, right? A recipe for disaster, you could call it flirting with death, even—

“Kiara, you should probably be more carefu—” my voice called out before I realized I was even readying myself to say something. 

Her eyes widened before she cheerfully squealed and increased her pace, a delighted grin on her face. “You said my name!!!” _Fuck_.

Comically, predictably, she hip-checked the side of the next table over, and the coffee cup flew out of her hand in my direction, flimsy plastic cap unsealing on impact and spilling its contents unceremoniously, sizzling, onto my bag.

 _Fuckin’ hell man_.

_What a way to wake up in the morning._


	2. Let’s get you back on your feet

And that was how I, Calliope Mori, found herself late to class for the first time in a while. Thankfully this professor was one who didn’t mind students drifting in and out as they juggled various priorities, but still...contrary to my eyebags and the haphazard way I organized my thoughts sometimes, I was quite the diligent student. Maybe not fond of what I was studying, but I tried not to shirk my responsibilities. 

Besides, I wasn’t late because the coffee took a while to clean off or anything—thankfully, my bag was waterproof enough to prevent that particular catastrophe—but because that girl, Kiara, she spent so long apologizing profusely to me that I lost track of the time. Yeah. That was it. She even insisted on making me another cup and paying for it herself, how excessive. But I wasn’t one to say no to a free anything, especially considering I’d wanted it specifically for my hangover. 

Though it was already half finished, the cup’s warmth was still a welcome companion to my cold fingertips as I tried to focus on the contents of today’s lecture. The words on the projector screen seemed to flicker in and out of my mind, but I reasoned that this was pretty normal for me as of late. Unfortunately for me, what I had scheduled this afternoon was even less interesting than today’s class. It seemed like one of those days when everything noteworthy happened upfront, and the rest of the day petered out to mundanity. _Well, at least your boy’s dead heart got a little excitement today,_ I thought to myself to keep said self amused. _Wait...it’s not that kind of excitement, okay? It’s just that I nearly had a heart attack when this drink almost made its way into my face earlier..._

I scowled and downed the rest of the cup as the instructor dismissed us, shoving my notes into my bag. _Great, that’s what we wanted! Calliope Mori embarrassing herself within the confines of her own mind._

As I made my way back to my apartment to change into scrubs, I reasoned that I was at least in a better mood than the one I woke up in this morning, which was good because the next few hours were going to be...grueling, and that was putting it kindly. It was just a short walk to the clinic from my place, but I was already dreading it. As a premed student, it was crucial to get hands-on experience one way or another while you were still in school, or at least that’s what I’d been told, and it made logical sense to me. But it was hard fitting into this performative hellscape, it really was. 

The feelings of distaste relented a little when I pulled open the door and saw the staff already hard at work. It’s not like I despised this sort of job, nor even the people here necessarily. The doctor I was interning under, for example—he was head of the clinic and a nice guy, a lanky bespectacled man of few words who seemed to nevertheless garner trust and admiration from colleagues and patients alike. Then again, the clinic mostly served the campus and surrounding college town, so maybe it didn’t take much to impress folks around here. He peeked around the corner of his office door when I walked in, holding up a hand in acknowledgement before going back to poring over his patient files. 

“Afternoon, Sensei,” I greeted him. He liked to be called that, even though none of us working here had much of a problem pronouncing his actual name. 

I quickly made my way to the restroom to finish readying myself for my shift. As I gathered my hair into a long ponytail, I glanced at my expression in the mirror and made a mental note to shake off what people colloquially referred to as my ‘resting bitch face’. I cycled my reflection through various equally off-putting generic smiles like the ones you might find in some lousy character creator, and my thoughts drifted again to the displeasure I associated with this place. 

Frankly, it’s more that I felt like _I_ couldn’t perform. Truth be told...I didn’t know if I was cut out for this line of work. Helping people, caring for them, it was hard. Caring _about_ people was already hard enough. I stifled a sigh as I finished tying up my hair, checking my visage one last time before deciding people were just going to see what they wanted to see anyway, and made my way back to the receptionist area.

The resident pharmacist who was stationed next to the front desk turned to give me a wave and gentle smile. “Hi Calli. Ready for work?” 

I inwardly groaned, but managed a “Yep! Ready as I’ll ever be…”

—

Sensei didn’t have very many patients scheduled for this afternoon, and an hour before closing, the receptionist had to take off to pick up her kid from daycare or something, so I was kind of getting my hopes up that _maybe_ I’d be able to leave early too. Another thing that made this kind of work difficult for me...the social exhaustion of handling patients one-on-one. But just as I was letting my mind wander, a walk-in threw a wrench in the plan. I braced myself to look considerate for another stranger before I realized the limping individual was more familiar than I thought they’d be. 

At making eye contact with me, the ginger’s expression lit up. “Wow, it’s like I keep running into you!” Still in uniform, her smile beamed with a warmth I wasn’t used to seeing, well...often.

“I would rather you not,” I grimaced, reminded of this morning. The girl sure was cheerful for someone who came within inches of giving me a scalding earlier. “More importantly, what happened?” I gestured to her foot. “You didn’t seem to be walking weird earlier today, despite the…mishap.” Sensei was busy with a work call in his office and we were otherwise a bit short-staffed, so I awkwardly tried to figure out what was ailing the girl without him.

Kiara averted her eyes sheepishly. “It started hurting more as the day went on, but I wanted to push through the rest of my shift, so I just kept going.”

I had been ready to give her a bit of a scolding, but I bit it back because I related to that feeling. Forcing yourself to keep going even when you felt miserable...there was a strange feeling of pride some people developed in flaunting how much suffering they were in while getting their work done, and I myself was guilty of that sometimes, but I had a feeling this girl wasn’t just saying these things to boast. My gaze softened. I didn’t have it in me to berate someone who looked like they were regretting their decisions...and it probably wasn’t good to reprimand someone coming to you for help anyway. “Here, let’s get you in a room so we can take a look.” 

I then heard a click as Sensei opened his office door. He gestured towards me, holding out a pen and clipboard while his phone remained pinned between his shoulder and ear. “Calli, you can help her. Bring this back to my desk later.” I accepted the clipboard before Sensei started retreating back into his office. 

“Eh? You’re not going to observe, Sensei?”

He simply gave a thumbs up and made an ‘okay’ symbol with his hand in encouragement before shutting the door to continue the call. 

“Must be important,” the pharmacist remarked from behind her desk. “But you’ll be fine, he must trust you, ‘Doctor’ Calli,” she added, chuckling. I could feel my ears reddening as I coughed at the title. It wasn’t uncommon for interns at the university to help patients with more minor issues without supervision, but I was used to having Sensei in the room to take the wheel in case I messed up. 

“Yay, Dr. Calli! Please help me, Dr. Calli!” Kiara parroted, energetically. It was kind of nice hearing my name cheered on in such an eager tone, although it was embarrassing to have it prefaced by an honorific I hardly deserved. _Well, I don’t have much of a choice right now,_ I thought as I led her to the patient room. The paper lining the examination table crinkled as I helped her onto it before wheeling a chair over to take a look at the ankle she was favoring. “You could’ve at least changed into something other than heels,” I commented.

The girl winced a bit as I gently rolled the foot in one direction, then the other. “Well you see...I don’t really own anything else appropriate for the workplace…”

I had to stop myself from snorting a little. “Kiara, you work at a fast-food restaurant.” 

“A fast-food restaurant with standards!” she huffed.

“Fine, fine,” I said, laughing. _Shoot...was that rude of me?_ I quickly tried to suppress it. I hope she knew I was laughing good-naturedly and not out of meanness or anything...

Thankfully, she started giggling as well, and I felt my normally ever-present workplace anxiety give way a bit. I finished prodding around at her foot, relieved that the swelling didn’t seem to be too severe, and sat back on my chair. “Thanks to that klutziness of yours, you twisted it pretty good. But that’s not…” 

_That’s not very professional of you, Calliope_.

I shook my head at myself, straightening my back. “I mean. You have a sprained ankle.” 

“I figured as much.” Kiara nodded, chin in hand as she looked down at me. She looked a little too dejected for someone who was just informed about a relatively minor injury, though.

I cleared my throat, but it came out as more of a choked sound. My clipboard suddenly looked very interesting. “Ordinarily, treatment is simple—ice it, keep it elevated and take over-the-counter pain medication if necessary,” I relayed stiffly, jotting down the necessary notes. “Just try not to make it worse,” I added. I wasn’t sure if I was talking about her foot or my botched attempt at capably treating it.

_Smack_. 

I yelped as I felt palms smooshing my cheeks firmly. “Wh-”

“I twisted it pretty good, huh, Calli?” Kiara teased while continuing to sandwich my face, grinning. “But thankfully that meant I got to see you again! And learn your name!” 

“Hey, stop that,” I tried to bat her hands away with the clipboard to no avail. “Is that any way to treat a doctor?” My words were distorted by the way my lips were pursed in her grip, embarrassing me further. 

“You were starting to get too into it, Dr. Calli,” she laughed in response, finally relenting. I was glad all traces of disappointment seemed to have disappeared from her face, though.

I rubbed my cheeks with my free hand, grumbling. “And you know, being a repeat customer isn’t something you want to strive for at a place like this.” I reached out to help her off the table, and she took my hand a bit shyly.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

I mumbled some sort of “there’s nothing to be sorry for” before looking away and taking a moment to compose myself. I wasn’t really expecting the normally chipper girl to apologize so softly, after all. When we got back to the receptionist area, the pharmacist eyed us curiously, and I felt the grip on my arm slacken as the girl went back to leaning most of her weight on her good leg. 

“You’ll be okay?” I asked with a hint of worry, before realizing I should probably be more reassuring. “I mean, don’t worry. You’ll be okay.” _Calliope you are SO bad at this._

Kiara laughed again, and it sounded very full and lively, with all the cheerfulness of a shop door jingling when opened. In a strange way, I felt kind of sad thinking about how that sort of sound signaled people leaving as much as it did coming in.

“Well, be seeing you…” is what I settled on as a closing remark. I didn’t know what else to say. How do physicians normally see off their patients? 

“When?”

I hadn’t expected the conversation to continue. “What?”

Kiara was looking at me expectantly, a surprised but happy expression on her face.

_Wait._ _Damnit_. “That’s not what I meant. I meant ‘take care’. Take care and have a nice life.” _Stupid stock phrases and my dumb no-filter stupid mouth._ I was currently embodying the mortification of a hundred people having told their waiters to have a nice meal too.

“Aww, but Calli,” I could see a lightbulb going off in her head as the girl’s mental gears turned, and I braced myself with dread for what was coming next—“Maybe _I_ shouldn’t be a repeat customer here, but _you_ can definitely patronize me again!” The wink she tacked on made the implications of the wording worse.

“Ooh~” the pharmacist added not-helpfully behind the counter. “At least buy her dinner first!” Did everybody, no matter how professional, turn into clowns on slow days?

“But I already bought her coffee!” Kiara played along.

“Yeah, cuz the first one ended up dunking all ove—because you spilled the first one all over my backpack!” I retorted, almost too flustered to check my language.

“How was it, though?” Kiara simpered. “My special coffee.” Who was this girl assailing me with quips? Where was the one who so shyly apologized to me in the exam room a moment ago?

“Warm,” I growled, trying to get a grip on the conversation again. I wanted to follow up with a witticism of my own, but on the other hand, I didn’t want her to feel like I didn’t appreciate the action she took to mitigate the accident this morning. “...It was delicious, really,” I conceded, grumbling. 

The conversation stalled as my response surprised the girl into muteness, which seemed miraculous for her, and the only other person in the room seemed inclined to enjoy idling away the rest of her afternoon observing the free entertainment before her without helping me out at all. Said afternoon was waning thin through the clinic windows, with the last of the comforting winter sun blinking itself out across the horizon. It reminded me of the warmth of a half-finished coffee cup.

“Say,” I said, glancing at Kiara’s ankle again. The girl seemed reluctant to move, and my voice hung in the air like a tether.

I scratched the back of my neck. The moments when day turned to night were always loath to leave when you were around to appreciate them.

And, well, my dreams of leaving the clinic early today had already been dashed the moment I decided to get a drink this morning, so what was a few more hours?

“Want to go buy some shoes?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading the second chapter! i enjoyed writing it and am looking forward to uploading the third, once i finish figuring out how to frame the fourth. cheers and take care!


	3. Do you ever make music

This time, I very much knew how I found myself standing by a coffee shop near uni, and I also knew that it wasn’t a coffee shop but rather the fried chicken restaurant a certain chipper ginger worked at. I checked my phone. A bit past 7...pm. I was a bit early. The thrum of vehicular traffic was louder outside the establishment, and so was the winter chill, especially since the sun had set hours ago. I pulled my scarf up higher around my neck. 

There were some days when you just ended up cycling through enough outfits worth a week, and this was looking to be one of those days. Ordinarily after a work day I’d take a nice shower and pop into my pj’s before studying, but here I was, braving January just to get a girl some shoes. _What is my life coming to…_

Kiara had accepted my proposition at the clinic excitedly, and I too found myself surprisingly eager to complete this task until we walked out and logic pummeled me over the head about how we were still wearing our work attire...and besides, Kiara still hadn’t taken any sort of painkiller yet. She said she had some at home, so I reckoned it was probably better to reconvene later that night. 

An inner voice nagged about why it had to be _to-_ night, which I quickly quashed. Look, it’s not like I was _excited_ to spend time with someone, okay! I just couldn’t watch her hobble out with those silly little cursed “fast-food uniform” heels or whatever she’d insisted they were, even if getting replacements meant more walking around in the interim. I was going to prevent having to see her again if I could help it. At least at the clinic, I mean…

“Calliiiiii~!” a shrill voice interrupted my thoughts, and I startled at my name being called within 5 centimeters of my right ear. Even with her mobility impaired, how did this girl still manage to sneak up on me??

“K-Kiara,” I wheezed. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

I took a moment to look her over as she smiled, tilting her head in confusion. Perhaps she didn’t understand how far her voice carried. “...Nevermind.” 

The girl dressed well off the clock, sporting a pastel sweater and coat that made her hair stand out and accentuated her frame, although the leggings she’d chosen didn’t look very warm. “Those don’t look very warm,” I pointed to her legs, the text-to-speech converter in my brain neglecting the compliments and only spitting out the most recent thought. 

“Oh? You were looking?” Kiara tittered, and I shook my head. I certainly wasn’t looking the way she thought I was. 

Your boy wasn’t thinking about anything tonight besides the good deed of helping an acquaintance out of their misery. “I was looking at how thin your pants were.” 

As the words left my mouth, I coughed, flushing. _Shut UP Calli!_ , my brain pleaded with me, but I knew how to save this. “Good choice because that probably means it’ll be easier to try on shoes later.” _Lame_.

But Kiara didn’t seem to mind, and despite giggling, chose not to tease me further. “Thanks again for thinking of me.” 

I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it, the way this girl flitted from flirtatiousness to genuine warmth in the span of seconds. Well, it certainly made the chilly night a little more enjoyable. 

_You’re not on a_ vacation _Calli, get to work!_

I grumbled. Always the internal thoughts. “Let’s go.”

—

We met at the restaurant not only because it was a landmark we both knew, but also because it was close to the town’s general shopping district, which, like the rest of the area, pretty much catered to the students anyway. I’d assumed Kiara was a student herself, like most of us who lived and worked around here. She confirmed this as we made our way to the stores, but it turns out I was a little off in my assumption that meeting at her workplace meant she wouldn’t have to go far from home. 

She apparently took the metro to her job, and it wasn’t just a negligible number of stops away either. When I asked why she lived far enough away to warrant such a travel time for work and school, she simply said it was a matter of money over convenience. Which I understood, being rather miserly myself, but...now I felt kind of bad.

After all, we went to a pretty well-off campus to begin with, and here Kiara was serving drinks just to stay, instead of using the position as a glorified resume booster the way most students did it. They ‘worked’ to be able to say they’d held their own in the service industry while simultaneously tapping away at their phones on their shifts. 

Kiara worked hard enough for all of them combined, at least going off of my first impression of her. Cheery and enthusiastic, she was the only one in that shop who had paid me any heed this morning, sleepy as I was and regardless of the ensuing blunder. That was something I admired. 

That’s why, I wanted to at least do my part to support her. “How’s this one feel?” I asked. She sat on a bench inside the shoe store as I crouched before her, helping her lace up the pair while taking care not to bend her ankle too much. It was almost reminiscent of our earlier exchange at the office. 

“Mm...not bad,” Kiara answered, but I could tell she was a little uncomfortable. The unpleasant experiences I had in dealing with the occasional child appointment with Sensei had taught me to pick up on that sort of discomfort quick, because when a child was unhappy, that led to all manner of unpleasant things, like screaming and having to try consoling them. 

Keyword _try_. I’ve been called a dad on multiple occasions because of how awkward I was with people’s kids...but thankfully, Kiara was not a child. Still, I didn’t want to ignore her preferences. What kind of medical caretaker would I be? 

I internally cringed at the label. I knew I was bad at caring, but when your boy set her mind to do something, you can bet she was going to do it right. So this girl had best get ready for some top-notch care tonight, at least to the extent I could manage. 

Kiara trembled with half-concealed mirth as I brought over 5 more boxes. “It’s just shoes, Calli! It’s not like my life is in danger, though I do appreciate you treating me like it is.” 

“Hey, nothing wrong with dying,” I said. “But I sure as hell don’t like seeing people in pain.” I paused for a moment, thinking over my language, before deciding it was...probably fine. Since I wasn’t in the office or at school at the moment.

“A doctor okay with dying,” Kiara laughed. “You’re cool, Calli.” 

I could feel my cheeks warm. “Okay, enough jokes, which one of these bad boys is going to unscrew your life?” I mumbled, yanking out another pair.

“As if it could be that easy,” Kiara said, taking a shoe from me and trying to slip it around her hurt foot, gingerly. I frowned a bit, but avoided reading into the statement. _Focus on the task at hand, Calli_. 

This one seemed to fit well. It was a darker pair, with accents and laces that coincidentally matched the hue of her uniform pretty closely, if I remembered correctly. Sporty with good support, but not too juvenile or unprofessional. At least, that’s how I felt about them. I wasn’t really a sneaker kind of gal. I looked at my own feet, currently sitting in my nicer pair of black boots. 

Kiara seemed more pleased with them too, compared to the others we’d tried. But she also seemed a little hesitant. “You sure I won’t look funny compared to everyone else?”

“Fuck everyone else,” I said automatically, unthinking. _Shit_. “Er, what I mean is, does it really matter what your coworkers think if you’re rocking something more comfortable that still looks good? Also, please forget I just said...that,” I added, meekly.

“What? I didn’t hear anything,” Kiara responded, and I started exhaling a sigh of relief before she continued with “So just fuck everyone else, right? Got it.” She grinned at me. I choked.

“Not that, you birdbrain, the other thi—you know what? Forget it,” I groaned, grabbing the box. “Let’s just go get these.”

Kiara giggled, untying her laces and placing the shoes back inside. “You can loosen up around me, you know.”

—

As we made our way to the closest station after our purchase, I took a moment to just breathe and take in the city. It had been a long day. The air we exhaled stayed icily suspended around our faces. Music played out of various storefronts opening in their last hours, and Kiara had seemed to quiet down a bit overall. Maybe she was tired.

Heck, I was tired, but I was also filled with that sort of weird hyper-awareness you get when you’re out with someone you have to look after. _Well, I don’t ‘have’ to look after a grown adult woman, but since we’re out here, might as well make sure she gets home safe._ Something catchy started playing from the shop we were passing by, _Plastic Love_ , and I started humming along.

As did Kiara. “I love this song,” she commented, “Especially this person’s cover of it.” But her demeanor didn’t match her words. That same aura of dejection from earlier had returned to her features, thinly-veiled, though you could pass it off as exhaustion if you weren’t paying attention. Not that I was paying attention particularly closely.

“You know her?” I asked, casually. Cautiously. _I guess I can dig into it now. Nothing better to do_. 

“Not really,” she replied. The song faded into the distance as we kept walking. “Well, I know _of_ her. She’s quite popular. I mean, she has to be, seeing as we’re hearing her cover in town and all!” Kiara tried to put some pep back into her voice, but I could tell she wasn’t really feeling it.

“Mm,” I mused, at a bit of a loss. Getting sad over someone’s cover?... “Do you want to know her, or something?” I tried, unable to come up with anything else.

“I want…” Kiara started, before stopping herself just as we reached the stairs leading down into the station. She struggled with a few steps, and I moved to help her. 

When she continued, it was on a tangent. “Have you ever made music, Calli?” she asked as she leaned on me gratefully.

Now _that_ made me pause. I thought of the stacks of half-assed lyrics sitting in my room right now, lines I was actually proud of hidden among piles of rejects. Should I tell her? Was it appropriate to tell someone you’d just treated for a sprain that you liked spewing profanities at a hundred miles per hour in your shoddily-soundproofed apartment room when you hoped no one was around to notice?

I decided to water it down. “A little,” I admitted, steadying myself as we reached the bottom. “Bits and pieces.” 

“Ooh, I want to hear!” The pep in her voice felt real now, and that warm smile had returned to her face. It spread to me through our contact, and I found myself smiling too. I liked her when she was warm. Compared to when she was not warm, which I didn’t like so much. Listen, it’s normal to enjoy warm things, okay? 

And then I processed what she’d actually said. “Uh...right now??” I asked, hesitating. She couldn’t actually mean right now, right? Sure, there weren’t as many folks around at this hour, but we were still in public, and—

“Yes,” she confirmed, and I panicked. 

“No. I refuse,” I blurted out, letting go of her.

“Just kidding~!” she laughed, and there it was again. Shop door bells, mixed in with the sound of the turnstiles beeping, and the station jingles. Nothing left to do but wait for the train now. 

“But maybe,” I reached out again, as if to hang on to the moment a minute longer, “A different day?”

Kiara’s eyes widened. “Wait, really??” Her voice and body exuded enthusiasm like sparks. 

“I mean,” I fished for an excuse to back up my impulsive proposition, “I think it’d be fun to sing again. Like, with actual people.” That much was true. I was about to give myself a mental pat on the back before I realized I’d basically made myself sound like a total shut-in. “Busy student life, am I right?...” I tried to explain, awkwardly. “Anyway, it’s just a thought, you don’t have t—“

“I’d love to!!” she assured me. “When???”

From dispirited to cheerful, just like that. I couldn’t make heads or tails of this girl. Plus, was this just how our interactions were going to be from now on? Me proposing something stupid on a whim and her eating it up? _Wait, ‘from now on’?..._

I smacked a hand to my forehead. _Well, whatever_. _I’m already this deep in hell anyway_. “How about this weekend...unless you’re working.” I half-hoped she was working just so I could worm my way out of this embarrassment. 

“I’m working!” Oh. 

_Wait, I’m disappointed?_

“How about after I work?” 

_Relief? Are you kidding me, Mori?_

The sound of the train approaching pulled me out of my stupor, and I sighed at once again giving in to the temptation of making more plans with this person right as they were leaving. It was normal, right? A normal thing to want to do, to see someone again.

“After work it is, then. I’ll meet you there.”

And the last thing of note etched into my mind that night was the beaming smile of a girl on a train chugging away. 

_So much for the excitement being just a morning thing,_ I thought dryly, before making my own way home. But with heat still lingering on my skin, my thoughts felt just a little bit warmer than usual.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay, work’s been nuts and i’ve been spending a lot of free time outside of it arranging lately. that being said, this chapter’s more or less been done for a while...it’s the next one i’ve been wrestling with, and i think i know where i’m going with it, though it’s not quite done yet. contrary to what i’d said i’d do in the beginning, i’ll probably post chapter 4 after i’m done with it rather than finishing chapter 5 first, to gain back some momentum.
> 
> basically, something irregular will pop up next update, but i think it’ll be fun, not to mention necessary, although its relevance might not be clear for some time. the others will show up and i’ll adjust the tags accordingly, though they won’t be set in stone. thank you for reading, and please bear with me!


	4. Reflection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the first of the ‘intermission’ style chapters spaced throughout this fic, but they’re hardly filler. without further ado, let’s get started~

Side C: Mirror

\--

Some nights, Calliope Mori dreamed, billowing, smoking things obscured by the curtain of her subconsciousness. Though she could just barely peek at their contents, which mirrored the day’s events, she could feel that all color was sapped from them, 7:33 coming and going without fanfare, 7 in the evening receiving a similar treatment—the week stretching out into nothingness. In these dreams, her brain felt like taffy pulled thin until gaps started appearing in her memory, and Calli would toss and turn before waking up, surfacing into the eye of a storm she still had yet to escape. 

But truthfully, her experience in this land of the slumbering dead felt nothing short of familiar. In it, life was 15% music, sometimes only 10%, and then 85% class and interning totaling up to one-hundred-percent blurred discontentment—in other words, life as usual. And always, always, the interior of her room. The curtains. The loneliness. Those cursed nights.

What felt unfamiliar was waking up with the urge to pull them apart, those curtains, the dust bunnies in her room squinting as much as she did at seeing, for the first time in a long while, the world passing by outside her suffocating little tomb. What felt unfamiliar was actually caring about the world, just a smidgen. Because in it lay things she was actually looking forward to for once.

So she unpacked her mind and wrote.

—

Side A: The looking glass

\--

Some mornings Amelia Watson looked into the glass only to be met with all scruffy blonde locks.

Well. Business as usual. The knowing glint in her eyes was capable of transforming her disastrous bed head into something irresistible, she just knew it. Her job didn’t solve itself, and there was nothing better for it than the battering ram called confidence...and maybe a comb. 

“Got up on the wrong side of the bed again?” her roommate mumbled sleepily, speaking around her toothbrush as she leaned against the doorframe of their shared bathroom. 

“ _Au-contraire_ my dear partner in problem-solving, getting up at all means I’ve started the day right!” Amelia responded distractedly, trying to make her bangs look respectable for the tenth consecutive minute.

“Could’ve started your sleep right, that might have helped.” Ina spit out the mint flavor in the sink and rinsed before moving behind Amelia to comb her fingers through the latter’s hair.

“Eep, I’m being attacked by a kraken!” the shorter girl yelped at feeling wet hands untangling her knots.

“Hush. I’m helping.”

“Whatever would I do without you,” Amelia grinned into the mirror wryly, pulling out her phone to check her schedule.

“Busy day following a busy night?” Ina commented, wrestling with a tangle as Amelia winced. She massaged the sore spot with her fingertips apologetically. 

A sigh. “For a few hours, yeah. Have to go to campus to process the results of last night’s work, then have a follow-up meeting with our advisor. Which, I remind you, you also have to go to,” she nudged Ina playfully at seeing her reflection balk.

“In-a few hours,” she yawned, untangling her fingers from the blonde’s hair and giving it a once-over. “There. Good as new.”

Amelia laughed, something that did more to wake Ina up than her third alarm this morning. “You make it sound like you totally replaced my hair or something.” 

“Nothing could replace your shiny, radiant hair in my heart. The rest of you can go though,” the latter replied, straight-faced. 

Their giggling echoed around the tiled walls. “How cruel!” the blonde snorted.

Ina shrugged with a knowing smile. “What can I say? It’s irresistible.” She turned to leave the bathroom while holding a hand to her gaping mouth again, muttering a very quiet “Maybe another hour.”

If Amelia Watson had to describe “irresistible,” it would have to be someone setting an alarm just to do their apartment-mate’s predictably terrible hair before she headed out for the day, hours before they actually had to be awake. 

She watched Ina’s retreating figure fondly. _Oh well. It’s nice to be one-upped once in a while._

—

Side I: Projections

\--

Some afternoons Ninomae Ina’nis flipped idly through her sketchbooks as she waited for her sluggish second desktop to boot up. It often took till much later in the day for her brain to boot up, too.

The late morning meeting had gone well, mostly due to Ame’s expertise she felt, but her efforts hadn’t gone unnoticed either. When her work was praised, Ina always liked to take another look at it with a more critical eye, trying to see where she could improve nonetheless. Thus, after the meeting, she came back to the apartment and fixed herself up some leftovers (and much-needed caffeine) while Amelia headed out to do more research before dinnertime rolled around. 

Amelia was a drifter in both mind and workplace, whereas Ina liked some consistency. So she sat in her little nest of a workstation—“artist hoarder’s paradise,” as Amelia liked to call it, to her chagrin—and looked at her sketchbooks. So much and yet so little had changed since they had started grad school together.

Their thesis project was a joint effort, and a bold one at that. Amelia did bold whereas Ina did reasonable, which would hopefully keep the two of them relatively sane throughout their endeavor. 

Ina hummed, tapping at a sketch of a room, a building, a city as she progressed through the pages. _Sanity, hm?_

The computer roared to life. 

“Ah, there you are. I was wondering when you were going to wake up.”

Ina and this PC had years of history. She’d saved it from getting tossed out way back when and had subsequently tinkered with it until it became a veritable ship of Theseus in its own right. Sometimes she thought it had a mind of its own, but that’s what you get for bogging down a system with programs and software upgrades over the years. 

Ina had put it out of commission in undergrad, but she had a way of dusting things off and getting them to do her bidding when she wanted them to. She’d been reviving the clunker more often lately to assist in the project, which decidedly needed more firepower than her reliable but lightweight main computer could offer. It rumbled as if in protest, offering up a series of clicks and other incoherent sounds as the bootup processes ran their course. “Now now Ao-chan, play nice today, okay?” 

‘Ao-chan’ first came as a nickname because of the ancient OS that was installed on it when Ina first got it. But back then, while studying introductory Japanese, Amelia had also pointed out that ‘ao’ meant blue, which, she jested, was perfect for how often the thing would BSOD. A bit sharper of tongue when they’d first met, Ina had simply asked in response whether the blue-eyed girl was also BSOD-ing whenever she dozed off in class, which shut her pretty little smart mouth down for once. 

The desktop finally appeared on screen, interrupting Ina’s daydream, and a number of programs opened automatically, putting her right back where she left off. A room, some buildings, a city. At once foreign and familiar, but still barebones as far as modeling went. Images in one’s mind were always fuller and more lifelike in comparison, that much Ina knew.

Gloved fingers grasped at the cramped table’s fourth cup of black tea and brought them to the artist’s lips. 

She sipped, swallowed, exhaled, 

picking up her digital pen in one hand while wiping the monitor clean with the other, 

starting to get into the motion of things, 

mind working into another headspace.

Immersing herself in another world.

“Let’s work hard today, too.”

—

Side G: Nothing to see here

\--

Some evenings Gura was separated from the rest of the world by a vocal booth for hours at a time. It kept in the messiness of _her_ —the unvacuumed bedroom, the sponge molding in the sink, the corners of her unkempt mind dotted with gardening facts and words remembered half-wrong.

Sometimes she found her mind closing in on her, so she locked herself in just to cry out.

And what came out was beautiful. The wave function collapsed into nothing but her modulating, unfiltered heart. When Gura sang, her voice was clear, but her chest was always a torrent of emotions. It was hard not to notice something like that, so she hid behind a recording room and an online handle, and let the music speak for itself. 

Amelia Watson noticed, though, as she approached the campus studio’s door, because no one else snuck onto campus to cram themselves in an oversized soundbox in the evenings when karaoke was available downtown, even on a weeknight.

She stopped just short of it, pausing. “Knock knock. Send text.”

If not for the insulated room, she might’ve heard an angelic voice and its accompanying uke abruptly stop, only to be replaced with a scoff. “Only you would send a knocking text instead of knocking. Send text.”

“Only _you_ would text me a response instead of opening the door. Send. Text.” Amelia tacked on two real knocks for emphasis. 

A beat later she was faced with an oversized hoodie a tad shorter than her, a gig bag hanging from the backside. Supposedly, there was a girl somewhere underneath.

“Oh? Whoever could this be? Someone famous?” she teased, pulling at the drawstrings until the hood scrunched up. Lips pouted and stuck out from the wrinkled void a moment later. 

“Hardly, but you know I don’t like the attention.”

Amelia hummed, drawing the sound out whimsically. “People are missing out then. But more importantly,” she said, shifting the folders in her hand, and old-fashioned camera around her neck. “You me Ina. Dinner?”

Gura narrowed her eyes a bit, motioning at the getup. “Dinner and pictures? Gonna take notes? Gonna draw us like one of your French girls?” 

A short burst of laughter. “Who, me? I do like taking pictures, but the drawings...maybe Ina would like to,” the blonde replied, taking out her phone. “Let’s ask her.”

“Let’s _not_ ,” Gura shoved her playfully to get a move-on. 

“Let’s what?” Ina’s muffled voice asked confusedly as she picked up. “Is it that time already?”

“Let’s _go_ ,” Gura yelled into the phone before Amelia had the chance to get a word in. “Food, you clowns. I’m hungry now.”

—

“So, how’s the project?” Gura gestured with her fork before plunging it into her second salmon fillet of the night. 

Amelia smiled a bit incredulously as she leaned back, having finished her entree a while ago. The three were situated across from each other at a local diner, each seated on a side of a small square table. It was one of the more casual places in town, hardly private, but individual parties’ conversations were drowned out from each other by the overall din anyway. “Are you sure that’s enough for you? Maybe we should order another?”

“Huh? Nah I’m good,” Gura chewed behind a stack of plates, confused. 

Ina chuckled as she continued knifing into her burger, which she’d somehow split into quarters to eat, and was still working on half of. “It’s interesting so far.”

“How many cases did you take on again?”

“Several,” Amelia said, moving to ‘surreptitiously’ take snapshots of the establishment once in a while. The flash was very noticeable but the college-run waitstaff and rowdy patrons either didn’t care or had seen it all already. “I think it’s going pretty well. Lots of different ones.”- _Snap_.- “Some more complicated than others. I’m still gathering a lot of,” - _flash-_ “ _information_.” She peered at the just-printed images, still developing, before storing them in one of her folders. 

“Huh? You’re still in the research phase?” The shorter girl paused her fish annihilation to take a sip of milk, brows furrowing. “I don’t really have much context, but shouldn’t you be, you know, actually working on the project at this point? The semester doesn’t last forever you know.”

“There’s no time limit,” Amelia explained, letting her camera fall back into place on her bosom before spinning a spoon on the table idly. “A thesis can take however long it needs to take, provided we have funding. Which we do. But we don’t want to leave these people in limbo forever, of course. So yeah, we are working on it.” The spoon slowed to a stop, pointing towards Ina.

As if on cue, the latter elaborated. “The nature of this project is that the research never ends, I think.” She shrugged. “Not my field of expertise. But how about you, Gura? How are things on your end?”

Gura smiled toothily, putting down her silverware on her now-clean plate. “I think I’ll have another cover out soon. Still have some more recording to do. Vocal training has been going well, I think I’m finally working more power into my upper register.” 

“Your voice is beautiful, Gura. Always has been.” Amelia commented, receiving a grin in response at the familiar praise. “Can’t wait to hear the new stuff.” Ina hummed in agreement before tapping a waiter passing by on the arm and asking for a box.

“What, are you gonna call me over for a private show again?” Gura laughed.

“Woah woah, you’re the only one who brought up a _show_ ,” Amelia snickered. But her expression quickly swiveled to one of gratefulness. “I might ask for another short recording though. It’s going to a good cause, I promise.”

“I didn’t think it was going to a bad one, but if you keep saying that...”

“Ame just uses them as bedtime lullabies.” 

“... _Inaaaaa!_ ”

“ _Ameee~_ ” she mocked in response before turning to Gura, putting up a hand and whispering, “As do I.”

Gura’s small frame shook with mirth and she gripped the table to steady herself, slamming it every so often to stop herself from bursting into laughter. The plates clattered under her shuddering, and her two friends were reminded that hiding under a very large hoodie was a lithe, strong young woman. “You two are weird.”

Ina eyed Gura’s near-empty glass vibrating and slowly sliding towards her, and she quickly moved to catch it before it careened off the edge. Amelia whistled appreciatively. “That’s why you stick with us, though,” Ina said, handing the milk back to her friend.

After downing its remaining contents, Gura held it up in a spyglass-like fashion and peered through it at her two companions. “Yeah, you guys always help me see things from a different angle. I’m looking forward to seeing what you two get up to. Math, science, arts—not my strong points. A live performance now and then is just a fair trade.” 

Ina and Amelia both reached to pat the shorter girl’s head simultaneously, and between the two of them her hair was mussed up thoroughly. “H-hey..!”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Ina smiled without relenting. “You’re more than talented, and you ground us more than you know.”

Gura returned the smile through the disheveled strands hanging over her face. “Dinner again next week, then?”

“Come over on the weekends too when you’re not busy serenading the universe,” Amelia suggested while handing the waiter exact change, a few coins clattering onto the wood surface.

“Alright.”

—

As the three made their way out of the establishment, 

the noise of coins clattering turned into a door swinging,

then chiming, 

teeth chattering from a January that had not yet relinquished its cold grip on bodies and minds alike 

making their way home on a Thursday night.

Holidays just past due date, 

the stray festive jingle was still ringing, 

ringing,

ringing out—

—

Side K

—Kiara blinked. It was morning already. 

Some nights she felt she hardly slept, mind always pushing and planning towards the next goal so she wouldn’t have time to waste contemplating what could have been, worrying at the thoughts she’d buried away.

She had a habit of beating her alarm most mornings, sometimes not even setting it, in a fashion she referred to as disciplined but others labeled daredevilish. Either way, it was a mark of pride for her, and she frowned at having woken up to beeping this morning, propping herself up to turn it off only to wince. 

Her ankle.

She’d forgotten her figurative wings _were_ clipped yesterday, at least one of them, and a discontented noise rose in her throat.

But then she eyed, in the corner of her vision by the door, the shoes she’d picked out yesterday still sitting there, and she slapped a hand to each cheek just to convince herself that it hadn’t been a fever dream. If it was, it’d been a very convincing one. 

Her mind drifted to pink hair and self-conscious words and the promise of something fun a couple of days from now. She cleared her throat, humming something to herself. Something familiar. Something rusty.

But for once, she thought, _It’s quite alright._

_I can work with rusty, if it’s just for fun_. 

And for a moment she actually cared about her voice, just a smidgen. Because with it came things she was actually looking forward to for once.

She smiled, clapping her hands together. 

“Okay okay. Kikkerikiiiiii~!” she crowed, to pump herself up.

It was invigorating, after all this time, and carefully, gingerly, she sprung to her feet. 

“Let’s get to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 👁 tune in next time for the next phase (of romantic mishaps and...hm...whatever else is going on here 😉…)
> 
> by the way, do people prefer double-spaced paragraph breaks? i tend to read fic on my phone and single-spaced is more than enough for me on mobile, but i’ll change it to whatever format is easier for folks, if you have a preference. 
> 
> ciao for now, and take care!

**Author's Note:**

> i'm gonna try to at least be one chapter ahead before publishing updates, so now that i've started it i'd better kick my butt into high gear...😂 i've planned out the skeleton of the fic already—it'll probably be some 10-or-so odd chapters long, and i want to be able to tell the story on a relatively consistent basis. 
> 
> per usual, i wanted to explore something a little more human with characters who are typically presented to us as fantastical; i love reading the latter, but i like to write the former. thanks for reading, and enjoy the ride!
> 
> i'm @staccatz on twitter, if you ever wanna drop by and chat about hololive or whatnot!


End file.
